Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW) comprises 48 teams of volunteers, operating across diverse geographies to help people who have encountered difficulties in the outdoors, particularly walkers and climbers but also assisting partner emergency services in a wide range of operations. Clear and reliable radio communications are a must to enable these teams to carry out their missions efficiently and safely — and most teams use outdated analog radio networks to achieve this.

The system includes more than 1,000 digital radio devices across MREW teams. DMR Tier 2 is the U.S. search and rescue agreed standard for land search and rescue communications to ensure interoperability. Base stations support instant push-to-talk (PTT) voice communications and VoIP telephone connectivity as well as open-standards applications.

Simoco’s solution is fully interoperable with MREW’s existing analog systems, meaning that mountain rescue teams can swap between digital and analog networks, allowing teams at different stages of their digital migration to continue to collaborate.

“We’re a complex organization, staffed entirely by volunteers, so it would be impossible for us to migrate entirely to digital at the push of a button,” said Mark Lewis, information, communications and technology (ICT) officer at MREW. “We look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

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First responders are out on the front line ready to face emergencies at all times. They are a vital component of communities, working to identify threats, carry out evacuations, and treat the injured to save lives.